Books by Gary Graybill

Monday, September 16, 2013

Here’s to Absent Friends

Today, before sitting down to write my little blog, I made two mistakes. The first was having a third cocktail and the second was opening the section of my computer that holds my personal pictures.

The first mistake resulted in my having a 4th (the 2nd does not always lead to the 3rd, but the 3rd always leads to the 4th) at which point I entered the kingdom where you believe you’re quite sober, but that is definitely not the case. It is a kingdom where your emotions are somehow connected to an amplifier and little nice things send you into uncontrollable laughter and little bad things make you get out a crying towel.

The combination of the two mistakes sent me down “Memory Lane”, at times laughing like a 5 year old in a feather factory and at times crying like baby in wet diapers. The pictures that evoked the strongest results were those of friends and family who are no longer with us -my absent friends.

Some of those pictures go back several decades. Vietnam and AIDS were both particularly hard on my address book (Afghanistan and cancer haven’t been too kind either).

In the end, the crying gave way to a lot of quiet smiles as memories of the good times pushed out the memories of the bad times. I found myself giving a wink and grin as I silently toasted the memory of each absent friend (which lead to a 5th cocktail and to an unexpected nap).

Awake again now, and a bit more clear-headed, I have to say that the time was not wasted. Remembering loved ones and close friends is a good thing, a very good thing. You see, those friends still live in your memories and will never die or go away as long as you remember them. They are there to give you the gift of a smile and a chuckle, sometimes when you sorely need one. Even the memory of silly argument or some mindless bickering can make you laugh and give that good old “warm fuzzy feeling”.

So here’s to them, may they never part, and here’s to you, my friend. You who are still there as we work on creating some of the future warm fuzzies.